investigativevoice.com

By Stephen Janis

In a city with a penchant for steep parking fines and tales of ticket woes, the penalties for an alleged series of unpaid parking tickets levied against a former Towson University student may represent one of the biggest to date.

Teresa Russell Jackson, who had relocated to Houston in 2004, was shocked to learn last year that she allegedly owed the City of Baltimore more than $8,000.

The penalties, totaling a whopping $8,000, were the result of $175 worth of tickets Jackson was alleged to have received.

“They said I had seven parking tickets from 2002 and owed the city of Baltimore over $8,000,” she said, referring to the law firm charged with collecting unpaid parking fines.

“I was totally pissed off because I live all the way in Texas and there was no way I could make it up there.”

But Jackson said she does not recall even getting one ticket. And because she did not move from Baltimore until 2004, she questions why city officials had not contacted her sooner to settle a debt that had ballooned into a sizable sum for a young woman trying to build a career in real estate.

“The reason why I say this system is corrupt is because these tickets were from 2002,” Jackson wrote in an email.

“I stayed in Maryland and paid taxes until almost 2004. Why would it take them all the way until 2008 to find me and present me with these tickets? I had never gotten any notice of them before then.”

Instead of paying the city, Jackson decided to fight. However, city officials notified Jackson of her first court date just two days before the trial, making it nearly impossible for her to attend.

“I sent off my request to have a hearing in December '08 and did not hear back from them until March 25th and they had scheduled my court date for March 27th.”

SECOND COURT DATE

Undaunted, Jackson requested a second court date, which she received for August. She spent $1,500 in travel expenses to successfully fight the tickets.

“I saw the judge and she dismissed all of the cases.”

But Jackson’s ordeal is not over yet. City officials have notified her that she may owe money on three additional tickets.

“I just received another notice that I have 3 more tickets in the system. It's absurd...so now I'm going through the same thing all over again,” she wrote.

"Even though I told them specifically to try me on each and every ticket relating to my plate number and they said at the time that was it. Now they're saying there were more that they overlooked. It's craziness..."

Jackson’s predicament comes to light a week before City Councilman Bernard “Jack” Young is set to hold hearings on a bill that would cap penalties at five times the original fine, which in the case of a regular $23 city parking ticket would be $115. Young said last week that he believed the tales of outrageous fines were doing more harm than good for the city, even in the midst of a severe budget crisis.

But officials from the administration of Mayor Sheila Dixon have yet to signal if they support Young’s efforts. Dixon spokesman Scott Peterson declined to comment on Jackson’s story, or if the administration would support Young’s efforts to cap penalties.

Recently Investigative Voice obtained an internal report commissioned by the mayor revealing that nearly 95 percent of all tickets challenged in court in 2008 were thrown out, according to a review of parking adjudication.

OVERBURDENED COURT SYSTEM

The tossed tickets translated into a loss of 10,000 citations in 2008 that failed to pass legal muster. The number was even higher in 2007, when more than 96 percent of tickets challenged in front of a judge were dismissed, resulting in the voiding of 11,000 tickets.

The study also highlights the problems with an overburdened court system full of sympathetic judges inclined to throw tickets out, noting that the state court system garners court fees even if the ticket is tossed, giving judges little incentive to uphold penalties.

The report, which is currently under review by the Dixon administration, outlines a plan that would move ticket adjudication to a newly created Bureau of Administrative Review, entitling motorists to contest tickets at an administrative hearing instead of in court. The report says administrative hearings would save the city money by lifting the requirement for ticket agents to appear at trials, citing statistics that show the average agent writes 29 tickets per shift.

In total, judges tossed nearly 30,000 tickets in three years, costing the city almost $1 million in fines, but also untold millions in penalties.

The study, which recommends the city convert parking tickets from criminal penalties into civil citations, reveals a system that relies heavily on penalties for revenue, but has little hope of collecting. For the past three years, 80 percent of all monies owed on unpaid citations are late-payment penalties in excess of the original fine.

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